Allison Lesson 3 Reflection

·         What students learned and which students struggled with the lesson.

From this lesson, students learned about the letter sounds for letters of the alphabet, and practiced identifying letters.  I would pick a letter card, and I would say, “I have a letter that makes the /__/ sound.”  Then, the students would say which letter it was, and see if they had that letter on their card.  If they had that letter on their card, they would cover that letter with a bingo chip.  Overall, one student struggled to identify a letter for each letter sound.  During the lesson, most of the students would say which letter I was thinking of, together.  This particular student never said any letters for a given letter sound.  Also, some students struggled with identifying some letters on their cards (e.g., they confused a ‘B’ with a ‘D’).

 ·         What are alternate reads of your students’ performance or products?

One alternate read of my students’ performance is some of the students who did say the correct letter for a given letter sound did not actually know the letter, but got the answer from their peers.  Since the children said the letter aloud as a group, this could have given students the answer, who did not actually know the correct letter for a given letter sound.  Also, an alternate read for my student who did not say anything during the lesson could be that he did know some of the answers, but he did not feel like saying them out loud.  I could only go by what I heard during the lesson.  However, if he did know the answer, but he did not say it aloud, there is no way of me knowing whether he knew the correct letter or not.

 ·         What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?

From this lesson, I learned a lot about my students’ literacy practices.  First, I learned most of my students can identify the correct letter for a given letter sound.  Extending beyond my objective, I learned all of my students can match the correct written letter with a letter stated aloud for most letters (e.g., they say “Aa,” and they can find ‘Aa’ on their bingo card).  Also, I learned all but one of my students can state their ideas aloud.  Finally, I learned my students can follow directions.  I did not have to remind my students of the directions, during the game, because they all followed the directions I gave them at the beginning of the lesson.  From this one lesson, I learned a lot about what my students can do in literacy.

 ·         When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?

I will re-teach specific letter sounds to students by playing the “Who Let the Letters Out?” song to the entire class when we have extra time throughout the day.  This song will help the students practice all of the letter sounds, so they can easily pick out the initial sounds they hear in words.  Doing this will benefit the entire class, but especially the students who need more support with letter sounds.  Also, I will ask the students, “I am thinking of a letter that makes the /t/ sound.  What letter am I thinking of?”  I will do this for various letters, when we have spare time.  This will also help the students practice all of the letter sounds.  Also, I will quiz specific students, individually, who need extra practice with letter sounds when we have extra time in the day (e.g., during recess, snack, when they finish their work early, etc.)

 ·         If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning?

If I were to teach this lesson again, I would make a couple of minor changes to it.  First, I would group the students by ability-level.  This way, I could provide more support for an entire group, or extend the lesson for an entire group.  The last group of students was all middle or high-achieving students.  I told them I wanted to challenge them, so I just gave them a word with the initial sound for the letter on each calling card.  Then, they had to say which letter I was thinking of.  This group did really well with this extension, and they all seemed to enjoy playing the game this way.  Therefore, it would benefit the students’ learning to group them by ability level because the entire group could receive the proper amount of support or extension to their abilities.

Second, I would change my formative assessment for this lesson.  While teaching this lesson, I wrote down letters students were able to correctly say to go with a given letter sound.  However, this was not as informative as I would have liked.  Instead, I would change the assessment so I write down which sounds or letter identification students struggled with.  This would improve my students’ learning because it would show me what I need to work with specific students on.

 ·         What did you learn so far about implementing your ‘core practice’ and what do you need to do to continue your professional learning?

So far, I learned my ‘core practice’ is important to getting my students interested in the given task.  I only used this ‘core practice’ with the last group when I stated words with the initial letter sound, instead of the letter sound.  I used students’ names in the classroom, or words of objects from around the school for a lot of the letter sounds.  When I did this, the students got big smiles on their faces because they knew what I was talking about related to their lives.  Doing this got them interested in the game even more because the task was not separated from their lives.  However, I need to continue my professional learning about this ‘core practice’ to see how else I could apply this ‘core practice’ to phonological awareness lessons in other ways.  I found using words and pictures (from the previous lesson) that are familiar to students to be successful, but I would like to know what else I can do to make phonological awareness lessons authentic to my students’ lives.  Also, I was only able to implement this ‘core practice’ with the last group, so I want ways to implement this ‘core practice’ with my lower-achieving students who I will not extend the lesson this way with.